Wright's density

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Is Broadacre City the same pattern as the scattered farms of upper Bavaria? -- Image used with permission from Prof. Manfed Sinz's lecture on contemporary space issues

Wright sketched several pictures of Broadacre City, and with his students built a large model showing what a typical area might be like. Some views can be found on the web through Google's image search.

Wright's pattern is closer to today's sprawl than it is to a city, but it is not the same as today's sprawl.

The land uses estimated from Wright's model lead to a density of about five hundred persons per square mile, which is much lower than current suburban densities, which are often above two or three thousand per square mile.

Wright was not envisioning today's suburbs outside central cities but a more diffuse pattern such as we find further out from cities, though those areas lack the mix of uses and incomes that he sought.

Broadacre City would be what Wright says, a new kind of settlement pattern, mixing housing, production, commerce, and cultural facilities in new ways that would not fit the current urban or suburban patterns.

[Nearby: The new city is everywhere -- City forms -- Watchful Architects ]